The last time she used it was at the beach, when she decided I was old enough to swim with her out to the raft, a jellyfish stinging her on the way. They floated all around us, their pale lavender domes gently bumping into our sides, misleading with their soothing color. I ignored their tentacles, just as I had pushed out of my mind all thoughts of what may be contained in the depths yawning darkly below me. I was determined to reach that raft, my mother’s tight smile and everything I didn’t know protecting me from panic. Now once again she pretended all was well. It was just your aunt Ula from Berlin, calling to wish you a happy birthday. I knew she was lying but I was still too young to question her version of the truth. She promised to rejoin the party and sent me back down stairs, my new necklace forgotten as the sound of guests welcomed me back to their happy midst. It isn’t until the next morning that I am finally told about the call. By then my mother has been long gone, the neighbor, Miron, having driven her to the airport where she already boarded a plane to Austria where her father lay dying. I slept unknowingly through it all. The house is strangely silent, most traces of yesterday’s festivities cleaned away. The garden has returned to its disenchanted greenery, the apartments back in sharp relief against the blue sky. The carport that had served as last night’s bar now holds nothing but the old blue Fiat, and a handful of tiny, nearly translucent Geckos, watching me from their perch on the walls. How simple it was to turn the ordinary into remarkable; how easily the deceptively tranquil held unexpected secrets. Like the happy Perlberg, who in just a few years will call a cab into which he will then load himself, a ladder and a rope and ask the driver to drop him off in the forests of the Carmel where he will later hang himself. I make my way back into the house, up the stairs and to my room. All traces of the magic in which my hands had briefly dipped are gone. 34 theMeadow
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